Just an observation. We are a nation at war. It is not a bunch of separate wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia and so on. It’s not an “overseas contingency operation,”and their actions are not “man-caused disasters.” To claim that the war in Afghanistan is a “good war” and the war in Iraq was a “bad war” shows a lack of understanding of either effort.

We call it the War on Terror. Terror is their chosen weapon. We have no trouble referring to the air war or the submarine war. Prissy complaints about language are out-of-place.

The headline in The New York Times reads : “US May Revive Military Courts at Guantanamo.” Back before the inauguration of Barack Obama, President Bush held a meeting with former presidents and Barack Obama so that he could ask them anything he wanted and they could offer advice if it was solicited. One offhand piece of advice suggested that President Obama look into the reasons behind the actions of the Bush administration before he made up his mind. That bit of advice was apparently rejected.

Mark Steyn laughed, in The Corner at NRO, that “Any Day now, the new conventional wisdom will emerge: Obama has turned around Bush’s failed war on terror because he’s had the courage to do the tough things that, while not always attractive, are ruthlessly effective.”

Jules Crittenden snorted more loudly, and goes into a little more detail. Hot Air points out that the leak came on a Friday night, where awkward announcements and bad news sneaks out. The Left, grasping for anything to discredit the Bush administration has tried mightily to discredit the War on Terror in general, and the Iraq War in particular. They tried to discredit the 9/11 attacks, downplay the idea of terrorism — only poor misunderstood souls, acting out their anger at being discriminated against — and in general, insinuate that there really was no terrorism, just something that the Bush administration had dreamed up to help get elected.

The prison facility at Guantanamo Bay, an ideal location for housing terrorist combatants, became a symbol of the White House’s intransigence in insisting that detainees did not qualify for the protections of the Geneva Conventions. The political left made Gitmo a symbol of the Bush White House’s alleged hostility to human and constitutional rights.

After years of demands from the left that Guantanamo be closed, Obama signed an executive order in his first week requiring the facility to be closed down within a year. Never mind that visitors have continuously said that it is a model prison. Never mind that the Obama administration has not the slightest idea what to do with prisoners who are ready to kill at the slightest opportunity.

They have cleared 17 Uighurs — Chinese Moslem radicals trained by al Qaeda— for release in the United States, and another 13 detainees, bringing the total up to 30. Well, not to worry, we will pay for welfare for them so they can more easily adapt to American life.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has been in Europe asking European leaders for help in relocating Guantanamo detainees. Holder spoke before a select group of policy experts, academics and journalists (European leaders?) in a crowded room of about 100.

In answer to a question about Bush administration officials “decisions to authorize tough interrogation techniques”, Holder said he believed that many of them would, privately, admit to having made some mistakes in the pressure and worry that followed the Sept. 11 attacks.

“I don’t suspect that would be true of Vice President Dick Cheney,” Holder added.

At another point, a questioner earnestly asked if those Guantanamo detainees who are believed to be innocent could be put in a hotel somewhere.

“Those detainees who are believed to be innocent.” Made me snort a little more loudly too. This is not an easy problem, as the Obama administration is beginning to discover. It was after much searching and study that the facility at Gitmo was built in the first place.

Actions have consequences. When you gin up a story about innocent terrorists and all the torture going on at Guantanamo for political advantage, sooner or later you have to face the solid block wall of reality. A hotel with hot halal meals, white glove treatment of prisoners, Mecca pointed out so detainees can pray in the way prescribed by their religion and Islamic reading materials, will be expensive to build and where to put it? Defense Secretary Robert Gates has asked Congress for $50 million to build a facility. Who wants such a prison just down the road?

The Pentagon will have to build a facility for the detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay if their current housing is closed. We know the perfect spot: a military prison in Cuba on a naval base called Gitmo.

People approach events differently. Some lean into a crisis, want to know all about it. Others dissemble. If it is scary, they don’t want any part of it.

For example, take war movies. Some people don’t want to see anything that contains violence. Others want to know as much as they can about an event, even as it is not very accurately portrayed in a movie where there is no real blood or real bullets.

Supposedly it is women who don’t want to see, hear, or think about violence. I don’t know if that is true, though I know it to be true for many of my friends. I assume that is where the “chick flick” vs. “war movie” division between men and women came about. But then I’ve heard “eeuw, gross!” from plenty of guys as well.

That goes for other worrisome things as well, such as economic crisis, natural disasters and politics.

I have always been of the former kind. I read military history, read everything I can find about the current economic crisis and the stimulus bill, am afraid of neither spiders or snakes, and am decidedly female. Are little girls taught by their mothers to jump on a chair and say “eek!” at spiders or mice? My mother was much like I am, though I don’t know about the war movie part. Perhaps I am just more my father’s daughter.

My bookshelves are a testament to those interests. The Rape of Nanking, Survival in Auschwitz, The Battle Cry of Freedom, Saratoga, A Soldier’s Tale, House to House, With the Old Breed, or Black Hawk Down, for example. Probably my all-time favorite books have been Patrick O’Brien’s Aubrey-Maturin series of 20 books on the Royal Navy in the 1700s. I have read them over and over, as have many historians, and recommend them to anyone who likes to read. But the 18th century in the Royal Navy was decidedly bloody.

I have always known from the pictures of refugees streaming from the cities and bombs of World War II, that that could be me. That the unexpected could happen. Yet I suspect most people don’t think like that.

I also believe that many people simply do not want to know about the Stimulus Bill, what it contains, or what it portends for the country. I have been shocked at members of Congress and their aides who did not read the bill that they voted for.

There are columns by college professors concerned because their students don’t read, and suggestions that television, the internet and new media like Facebook, Twitter and Kindle are changing Americans’ relationship with words and understanding.

How about you? Do you fear or enjoy violence? Snakes and spiders? Are these things related? Do you want to know everything you can about a problem or would you prefer not to know if you feel that you can’t do anything about it? War movies, chick flicks? What is learned and what is innate? And does thinking or reading about frightening things or big crises prepare you a little better for actual things that happen?

Russia agreed to pull out of South Ossetia, a cease-fire in the Georgian War, but, of course, they are doing no such thing. They are digging in a little deeper. In Poti, a port on the Black Sea, the Russians have sunk all Georgian naval and patrol vessels, and have been systematically destroying port facilities. They are far outside the borders of South Ossetia. The cease-fire deal calls for both Russian and Georgian forces to pull back to positions they held before fighting erupted on August 8.

The media seems to have accepted Russian propaganda, as usual.

The War in the House of Representatives

First she says she will and then she won’t. She will consider opening “portions”, but probably include little remedies that fit all her lies. Opening the Strategic Reserve, creating green jobs, curbs on non-existent speculation, all the loony leftist ideas. We need to increase the pressure on the Speaker of the House. She has created the worst record of any speaker in my lifetime, and with an approval rating of 9%, it can’t get much lower.

Do you suppose that Speaker Pelosi’s big investment in Boone Pickens’ big wind energy play “Clean Energy Fuels Corporation has anything to do with her insistence on subsidies for wind energy?

As the central front in the global war on terror, success in Iraq is an essential element in the long war against the ideology that breeds international terrorism. Unlike past wars, however, victory in Iraq will not come come in the form of an enemy’s surrender, or be signaled by a single particular event — there will be no Battleship Missouri, no Appomattox. The ultimate victory will be achieved in stages, and we expect:

In the short term:

•An Iraq that is making steady progress in fighting terrorists and neutralizing the insurgency, meeting political milestones; building democratic institutions; standing up robust security forces to gather intelligence, destroy terrorist networks, and maintain security; and tackling key economic reforms to lay the foundation for a sound economy.

In the medium term:

•An Iraq that is in the lead defeating terrorists and insurgents and providing its own security, with a constitutional, elected government in place, providing an inspiring example to reformers in the region, nd well on its way to achieving its economic potential.

In the longer term:

•An Iraq that has defeated the terrorists and neutralized the insurgency.•An Iraq that is peaceful, united, stable, democratic, and secure, where Iraqis have the institutions and resources they need to govern themselves justly and provide security for their country.•An Iraq that is a partner in the global war on terror and the fight against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, integrated into the international community, an engine for regional economic growth, and proving the fruits of democratic governance to the region.

Not mentioned in the President’s strategy — Kuwait, invaded by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, is opening an embassy in Iraq. Or, if you are not impressed by that:

Obama’s world tour is becoming a little embarrassing. The candidate— not yet the nominee — is doing his commander-in-chief imitation, and loftily informing everyone how things will change as soon as he is anointed elected. Since he knows so little about the Middle East, one would think that he would approach generals, prime-ministers and commanders with a degree of humility, but that is not to be.

Foreign Policy 101: It is better to listen to experts than to expert to the experts.

The Democrat position on the War in Iraq evolved, not immediately after they voted for it, but after the successful invasion. It started to look like President Bush might have a winning war on his hands. A successful George W. Bush could not to be allowed. There was an election coming in 2004, and defeating Bush was far more important than what was best for our military or our country.

Democrats have been loud in their insistence that the “war” was only properly in Afghanistan and only properly in search of Osama bin Laden. Gone was any consideration of the Long War against Islamic Terrorism. Right down the memory hole. Historian Arthur Herman has a wonderful article reminding us all of the real facts on the ground.

Something Obama has apparently never done is to study a map of the Middle East. Looking closely at the centrality of Iraq and the states that border Iraq is important, and informative.

In the clip above, Obama, fully into his commander-in-chief mode, is making pronouncements that he, as a very junior senator, has no business making. He manages to claim “his job as commander-in-chief”, sneer at President Bush who “says” he is deferring to the commanders on the ground, and pretends to have better judgment than all of the above. And because he has better judgment, he deserves all the credit, or something like that.

Danger Will Robinson! Danger Will Robinson! Danger Will Robinson!

Obama’s sole claim to “good judgment” and the very basis of his candidacy is his original opposition to the war as a junior back bencher in the Illinois state legislature. Without any access to the facts that the President, his Cabinet and the Congress had, Obama signed on with the anti-war left and the netroots.

The facts about his judgment seem to indicate otherwise. He doesn’t change his mind as he alters his position. He remains absolutely correct.